Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Military Entangled in 'Extreme Missionary' Christian Reality TV Show

By Jason Leopold
 
The Pentagon has once again come under fire by a military watchdog organization for its involvement in the production of two cable programs, one that featured two so-called "extreme" missionaries embedded with a U.S. Army unit in Afghanistan trying to convert Muslims to Christianity.
 
The popular reality series, "Travel the Road," aired on the Trinity Broadcasting Network and featured Will Decker and Tim Scott, two so-called "extreme" missionaries who travel the globe to "preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth and encourage the church to be active in the Great Commission."
The other cable program green-lit by the Pentagon is "God's Soldier," which aired in September on the Military Channel, and was filmed at Forward Operating Base McHenry in Hawijah, Iraq. It features an Army chaplain openly promoting fundamentalist Christianity to active-duty U.S. soldiers in Iraq in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), a watchdog organization, first disclosed details about the cable programs in the group's weekly newsletter on Friday. The group plans to amend a federal lawsuit it filed against the Department of Defense earlier this year, currently in federal District Court in Kansas City, Kansas to "include these despicable unconstitutional promotions of fundamentalist Christianity in the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan," said MRFF founder and president Mikey Weinstein.

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